Strut Hair Solutions is a safe haven for women losing their hair.
Just after 3 a.m. Monday, owner Helena Gibson said burglars saw an opportunity and took it.
“They took, I think it was the officer counted, 36 wigs, which was about a $25,000 value,” Gibson said. “Then they got maybe 26 hair toppers. They kept just grabbing the top pieces that we had, which was another $10,000. I keep about 400 or 500 wigs in the back.”
Gibson's stock is why staff could recover so quickly. Long-time regular Anna Stoner, who didn’t even notice anything out of place on Friday, is grateful the place she’s relied on for 10 years is still standing.
Get top local stories in Southern California delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC LA's News Headlines newsletter.
“I had lupus and I had cancer,” Stoner said. “You know, being bald is good. I mean, it's fine. And people are very accustomed to it now. But if you're a kind of person like me, I don't look good bald. And so when I know that, I have a place like this to go to. I think that people need to know that it's here.”
The store has a security system, but the alarm didn’t go off. Gibson said this emboldened the burglars to stay longer and steal more.
“There's an event log that shows that my staff actually armed the alarm, and then when I walked in on Monday morning, it shows that the alarm was turned off, signal was received,” Gibson said. “So what happened at 3:00 in the morning?”
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
Gison has been working with her security provider to figure out what went wrong.
The burglary occurred just weeks before Gibson is to open a third location, in Cardiff. Suffice it to say that she’ll be taking lessons learned to her new location.
“For San Diego, Solana Beach, don't get so comfy and forget to be vigilant, because that's what happened to us," Gibsons said.
The San Diego Sheriff’s Department is investigating the incident but doesn’t have details about the suspects yet.
